A cruel combination of diet, inactivity and heredity
makes the U.S. market for gastric surgical procedures, one of the largest in the
world. Almost half of the adult population of the U.S. is overweight and statistics
indicate there may be over 5 million people classified as morbidly obese. Traditional
surgical techniques to treat these ailments have been available for generations,
but the number of procedures actually performed remains small. This is due primarily
to the invasive nature of these procedures, requiring, large painful incisions
and long recovery times. Patients typically preferred to stay on medication or
to attempt losing weight non-surgically when faced with the traditional surgical
option.

There is, however, a growing shift towards a relatively new surgical
approach known as Laparoscopy. A specific device known as a Hand Assisted Laparoscopic
Surgery device was developed to enable surgeons to conduct these minimally invasive
surgeries. And the team responsible for this device? A team of specialists at
Applied Medical Group, a company out
of Rancho Santa Margarita, California. Pat Matthews talked with these scientists
and got an insight about the new path of surgeries in the future.

Applied
Medical is one of a new breed of medical device companies, capable of implementing
Research and Development effectively and affordably. Applied says they have great
pride in their dynamic, integrated teams of engineers, product and business managers
and operational leaders who all joined Applied to make a difference. These teams
say they consistently develop concepts into products in a third of the typically
expected development time.

The Applied teams have launched a
portfolio of 150 pending or issued patents covering 12
technologies and over 250 products to achieve leadership
positions in new, minimally invasive and established
surgical procedures. The company focuses on four
specialties: Cardiac, Vascular, General Surgery and
Urology. And research indications are that they reinvest
high percentages of their earnings towards development and
market implementation of technologies.

Offering a major surgical breakthrough, that is, a less invasive alternative
to traditional, open surgical procedures, the Applied Intromit is a laparoscopic
hand port, that enables surgeons to perform complex surgical procedures through
a very small incision. But pioneering new surgical procedures is not new to Applied
Medical, apparently, the company is known and respected for its innovations in
practices and technology. With 18 % of its revenue invested in R& D, Applied
seems to be exceptionally adept at developing, manufacturing and delivering medical
devices.

We were told that the first application for this type of modality
is donor kidney procedures. The donor kidney is removed through a port called
Intromit and the donor recovery and pain are shortened by days. But this was only
the beginning. This approach has already spread to gastric and bowel procedures.
Experts estimate that over 1 million surgical procedures, worldwide are potential
candidates for this approach.

The experts say this new technology results
in procedures that are far less traumatic to the patient than open surgery. Given
these facts, it is easy to see why patients are now requesting HALS techniques
for their surgeries. Many surgeons report that patient demand for HALS
procedures, especially the type used to treat obesity, is
growing rapidly.

Currently the US has the ability to make úsmart bombsÓ that see their target,
but many of our medical devices are relatively blind. Experts believe in the coming
years many of the medical devices that travel within the blood vessels or behind
anatomies will have built-in visualization capabilities. Applied Medical says
they have already introduced such a device with the capability of enabling the
surgeon to see and navigate within blood vessels during a procedure called in-situsaphenous
vein by-pass procedure. With all this new technology on
the horizon, the promise we all hear about for the future
of surgery seems all the more real.